KOCHI: Members of the "Kerala Strikers", the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) team floated by Malyalam film artistes' collective Amma, were forced to disembark from a Hyderabad-bound flight after allegations of misbehaviour with the crew members at the Cochin airport on Friday.
The flight was to take off at 1pm and the incident forced the authorities to abort its take off and defer its departure by another one and half hours .
The team members included stars like Bhavana, Mythili, Manikkuttan, Riyas Khan, Prachod Kalabhavan and Idavela Babu.
The aircraft had entered runway when the row between the crew and the team members numbering about 30 reached a flashpoint.
The captain insisted that they must be disembarked along with their baggage and the flight was brought back to the taxying bay. "Initially the passengers resisted but eventually had to deplane as the other passengers onboard requested for the same," IndiGo said in an e-mailed response to questions from TOI here .
According to the members of the star team, they did nothing which can be termed as misbehaviour. "We reached the airport around 12 noon. As the flight started to move through the runway and the air hostess finished the safety demonstration, some of the team members applauded. Then, an air hostess complained to the captain who in turn took a stand that the flight can take-off only after offloading us," actor Rajeev Pillai who is the captain of Kerala Striker's, told TOI over phone.
The flight took off from Kochi at 1433 hrs and landed at Hyderabad at 1544 hrs, the IndiGo release said.
"The Kerala Striker's have filed a complaint stating that they were offloaded them in an unfair manner," an official with Nedumbassery police station said.
"We are facilitating the rebooking process for these passengers on the next available flight," the airline said.
"The semi-finals of CCL between Kerala Strikers and Bhojpuri Dabang is to be held on Saturday in Hyderabad. As per the schedule, we were to start net practice at Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium there by Friday afternoon," Rajeev Pillai he said.
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